One free kids meal per every purchased adult entree. Kids must be 10 and under. Kids meals are our standard kids meal, with choice of hamburger/chicken/grilled cheese/mac and cheese, fruit and/or veg, milk or juice or soda.

No “to go” orders – kids and adults must be present and at the same table.

No coupon or code needed – just show up with your brood in tow and settle in for a nice meal.

and we have lots of good new spring beer on tap. Try Fruhlingweisse, a nice wheat beer from Portland’s Rosenstadt Brewery; Acoustic Ale’s Strawberry Blonde which is a nice pinkish blonde with a hint of berries, or a Pils, the classic pilsener from McMinnville’s Heater Allen, which is still rated one of the top beers in the world. Any of these beers will pair well with our new spring menu, which features sesame seed ahi, a new loaded falafel salad, or if you’ve got the munchies, chili lime pork rinds.

Want to go on a short road trip? There is a new brewery that just opened which makes some excellent farmhouse ales over on the edge of Yamhill County on the other side of Sherwood. The brewery is housed in an historic building in a hazelnut orchard. The brewery is called Wolves and People – go southwest on 99 until you hit Rex Hill vineyards on the way into Newberg, then take a right on Benjamin. It’s only open Saturdays 2-8, no kids allowed, there may or may not be a food truck around. Here are some pics from their recent opening:

At Hophouse, we are mostly about beer, but we still love our hard cider. Eight taps will be loaded with unusual local hard ciders all month long.

To celebrate cider, we are having discounted flights. 8 for 8. Eight 2 ounce pours of all different hard ciders for $8.00. And 12 ounce pours all $5. And full growler fills for only $13. This price applies to all hard ciders, including specialty one-off kegs and imperials like 2 Towns Bad Apple, all the barrel-aged ciders like Wildcraft Stone Fence (in rum barrels with peppercorn) , blackberry infused ciders such as Bauman’s Obsidian (blackberry), Bull Run Bramble Berry Cider (marion/boisonberry), Cider Riot! Never Give an Inch Oregon Blackberry Cider, plus all the hopped ciders like Red Tank CHOPS! (hopped cherry) and Swift Dank Hop (Pineapple).

So stop by and try a flight and fill a growler with your favorite to go! Enjoy the sunshine!

Ciderfest 2016 is at our 15th Avenue location at 1517 NE Brazee.

We still have tickets available at the door. Entry price today (Sunday) at the door is $30 for admission + 12 tokens + tasting glass.

We have 83 ciders on tap today!

At Hophouse Ciderfest, it’s all about the cider. Almost all of our participating cideries will have representatives and cidermakers from the actual cideries pouring their own product. Almost all of theciders served will be from the Pacific Northwest, and we are proud to offer cider from the smaller, newer cideries like Baumann’s, Wildcraft, Farmhouse, Incline, Neigel Vintner, and Apple Outlaw as well as ciders from 2 Towns, Reverend Nat’s, Rogue, Schilling, Carlton Cyderworks, Ace, Cider Riot!, Portland Cider, Anthem, Wandering Aengus, Finnriver, Red Tank, Swift, Tieton, Alpenfire, Alter Ego, HiWheel, Bull Run, and Angry Orchard as well as some others.

Party begins at 4:00. First 50 attendees get some random free swag. No promises yet on what it is – could be tshirts, glassware, advance tokens for Hophouse Ciderfest (!!!! April 2 & 3).

Party is at 15th Avenue location – 1517 NE Brazee. Rain or shine – we may or may not be tenting off part of the parking lot depending on the weather. Either way, we’ll be tapping kegs both inside and out.

Breakside IPA wins the 4th Annual Hophouse blind taste test. Out of 1445 ballots cast in January, Breakside was by far the top vote-getter at both individual Hophouses and of course overall with 425 votes. We are excited by this for a number of reasons:

1. This is the first time a Portland brewery has earned this honor. We love to “drink local” and this is as local as it gets.

2. Breakside Brewery is “new-ish” and not a huge brewery – although they are growing rapidly. They started with a 3.5 BBL system in 2010, added a 30 BBL system in the Milwaukie neighborhood in 2012, and are in the finishing stages of building a new brewery and taproom in NW Portland, due to open this coming summer. Some of the Breakside crew below (photo courtesy of ( http://www.giuliosciorio.com):

3. In past years, we collected 700-900 votes per year, approximately. This year that number is 1445 total ballots. That is a lot of people as well as a lot of different types of people (both beer nerds and people doing it for fun). This year we definitely had the most brewers come in and take the test, as well as people from the media and representatives from many of the large distributors.

4. This is the most legitimate permutation of the IPA test we’ve done to date. The first couple of years we had two different versions in which you could choose to just pick your favorite IPA from a flight, but you could choose to actually know what you are picking. Because of that reason, there could have been a tendency to pick a cool new brewery instead of one of the older breweries, so it could have skewed the results somewhat. This year the results are based on a completely blind test.

5. Also this year, we were extremely diligent about the the “blind” factor. In order to maintain the secrecy, we did not allow patrons to order from any of the taps on the blind flight. They might have asked for a pint of Hop Lava, and promised to not look at the tap when the beer was being poured, but we didn’t do that. In fact, some people stomped out of the pubs because of this – they wanted an RPM and we wouldn’t pour it for them because the bartenders didn’t know which tap handle it was. We didn’t even change out the blind IPA kegs except for once at Hawthorne (after hours) and most employees did not know the line-up themselves. One person, our beer buyer Cait Kelley, graded all of the ballots and tabulated the data.

6. We expected Barley Brown to win again this year. We kept their Pallet Jack on, a great beer that won last year, all month as our “known” IPA. We actually sold almost 2000 pints of Pallet Jack this January because people love it and we needed to have an IPA on at all time, plus it won last year. This year it came in second with 228 votes. We thought this beer might have an unfair advantage because our regulars have been drinking this for a year now. However, in the end, it didn’t make a difference. All the other beers got 50-120 votes. So in the end it is a clear win.

7. Ben Edmunds, one of the brewers at Breakside, came in and took the blind taste test early in the month and scored a whopping 8 right, out of all 1445 ballots. The fact that Ben was able to do this means, if nothing else, he has an amazing palate. So he must know what he’s doing. Arguably some or many of these entrants had an element of luck, but we don’t think luck was involved with this.

More about the contest:

Average score was 2.29 out of 12.

We got only 21 ballots that scored 8, 9, 10 or 12 correct.

Of the people who don’t mind social media, these are the names of people finishing with 8 or more correct:

Last weekend to come taste all of the top Oregon IPAs, take a blind taste-test, and vote for your favorite! Top IPA gets put on permanent tap at both Hophouses for all of 2016.

Drinking Horse Team!

Check out the guys taking the blind taste-test from Drinking Horse Brewery, who make an IPA that we included on the list. Drinking Horse is the youngest brewery included on the list.

Next week we announce the winners and the winning beer. So far out of over a thousand people we’ve got three people with perfect scores – they matched 12 IPAs with the 12 breweries. We’ve got another twenty or so folks who scored 8 and above, and if you’re one of these people, we’ll be contacting you soon to get you your prizes.

If you’ve already taken the taste test, you’re welcome to return and take it again.